PERMITTED CHANGES OF USE – the seminar

In addition to publishing my new book, “A Practical Guide to Permitted Changes of Use”, BATH PUBLISHING are also organising a seminar on this subject, which is to be held at the RIBA at 66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD on Friday 27 November. [NOTE THE CHANGE OF VENUE.]

This will be a morning event, starting at 10.00 a.m. (with registration from 9.30) and is timed to finish at around 1.00 p.m., including a mid-morning coffee break. The charge for this event will be a very reasonable £120 +VAT if you book before 25 October and includes a copy of my book (worth £40 when published), which will be given to all delegates to the event. [UPDATE: The early bird discount has been extended (for readers of this blog only) until 13 November. For details, see the post on 26 October, which tells you how to claim this discount when booking.]

The seminar will cover some of the issues that give rise to difficulty in relation to this type of permitted development, followed by a panel discussion:

• Restrictive conditions in planning permissions - Do they or don’t they preclude permitted development?

• The 56-day rule in practice

• Structural issues (including partial demolition and structural alterations)

• Prior approval - material considerations and appropriate conditions

You can read more about the programme and venue or book online on the Bath Publishing site here.

Professional delegates will be able to claim 2½ hours’ CPD for this event.

If you have already ordered the book and wish to attend enter the discount code COUPRE35 when booking online to make sure you are not charged for the book again.

Places at the seminar are limited so it will be ‘first come, first served’. Don’t delay. You can book your place now by clicking on the button below the seminar icon on the left-hand side of this page, by calling Bath Publishing on 01225 577810 or by sending your cheque and full contact details to:

BATH PUBLISHING LIMITED 27 Charmouth Road Bath BA1 3LJ

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On the Eve of the Secret History of American River People Expedition

As you may have heard, the shantyboat nears completion and we are readying it for the Secret History of American River People expedition on the Upper Mississippi starting in a few days.

This is a research journey to gather and present the lost stories of people living on or adjacent to the river. You can read all about it at the project website.

You can follow our progress on our voyage. You may want to hear about our triumphs and travails and the cool people we meet. If so, you can get automatic updates via email (or Twitter or Instagram and so on) right here: http://peoplesriverhistory.us/contact/

I also hope you will keep in touch with us and send us contacts of amazing people we want to talk to on the Upper Mississippi.

Thanks for all your support that has made this project possible.

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Judicial Review of office to residential changes

The High Court granted permission last Friday to four London borough councils to go ahead with applications for judicial review of the amendment of the GPDO that took effect on 30 May, allowing change of use of offices (B1) to residential use (C3). The hearing is currently scheduled for 4 December.

The fact that the High Court has granted permission for a full hearing merely indicates that there is at least an arguable point in the case, but this cannot be taken as an indication that these challenges will succeed. The ability of local planning authorities to make an Article 4 Direction if they are concerned about such changes in their area must surely be a strong argument against the legal challenge that has been mounted against this extension of permitted development rights. The timing of the application for judicial review might also be a problem for the local authority claimants if De-CLoG chooses to raise this (as I pointed out in this blog some time ago).

The number of prior approval applications received by some London Boroughs under the new rules has caused surprise and alarm in those authorities, but I am not convinced that an attempted judicial review of this subordinate legislation is the right way forward.

On the other hand, one of the grounds of challenge relates to the way that applications for exemption from the new PD rights were considered by De-CLoG. I did have misgivings about this at the time (which I mentioned in a previous blog post). This is one aspect of the matter in respect of which the government could be vulnerable.

If the hearing timed for 4 December goes ahead on that date, judgment will probably be reserved and is likely to be delivered either just before or shortly after the Christmas/New Year break. An appeal to the Court of Appeal by whichever party loses could well be on the cards, so a final answer may not be known for some months yet, maybe well into 2014. Meanwhile, there is nothing to stop applicants getting on with their prior approval applications. In fact the possibility (however remote) that these permitted development rights could be withdrawn as a result of this legal challenge may encourage an even greater number of prior approval applications to come forward in order to get these proposals through before the drawbridge can be pulled up.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Breaches of planning control – the need for continuity

[I generally try to avoid posting very long items in this blog, but just occasionally a topic crops up that requires a more lengthy treatment. The following article might justify publication in a legal journal, but I thought I would share it with readers of this blog in the first instance. As with a previous lengthy article I wrote on barn conversions, I propose to split this article into at least three separate blog posts.]

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It is an interesting coincidence that my colleagues Ben Garbett and Oliver Goodwin and I have all been puzzling over the same legal conundrum recently in connection with various cases in which each of us is currently involved. The issue that we have all been considering is the need to demonstrate continuity of a breach of planning control in the case of a change of use and/or breach of condition in order to establish that this breach has become immune from enforcement and therefore lawful.

The judicial authorities differ slightly depending on the nature of the breach (change of use to a single dwelling – the 4-year rule, change of use to some other use – the 10-year rule and breach of condition – the 10-year rule again). However, it is convenient to look at all these cases together in the chronological order in which the respective judgments were delivered.

The first of these cases, Nicholson v. SSE [1998] JPL 553, was heard in 1997. It related to the breach of an agricultural occupancy condition [“AOC”] in respect of which an LDC was being sought. The inspector, having reviewed the evidence concluded that the condition had not been breached continuously for a period of 10 years. The appellant also challenged the finding that there should be a subsisting breach at the time of the application.

The break in the continuity of the breach of condition arose from a period of several years when the property was unoccupied. The Inspector, applying an approach to this issue previously taken by the Secretary of State in other appeals, considered that there is no breach of the AOC during a period when an agricultural dwelling is not occupied at all. The house had remained unoccupied right up to the time of the LDC application. Its use as a dwelling had not been abandoned as such, and in fact it had been substantially extended (with planning permission) and had been subject to a lengthy process of refurbishment. However, following this continuing period of non-occupation, the inspector had concluded that any future occupation of the property by a person not complying with the AOC would be a fresh breach of the condition, with which previous periods of non-compliance could not be aggregated.

The Deputy Judge analysed the legal position in this way. By section 191(1), if a person wishes to ascertain whether “(c) any other matter constituting a failure to comply with any condition.....is lawful” he may make an application for that purpose. This paragraph is worded in the present tense, and is clearly directed towards the time when the application is made and to the lawfulness of the breach of condition at that time. By section 191(3), any matter constituting a failure to comply with any condition or limitation subject to which planning permission has been granted is lawful at any time if the time for taking enforcement action in respect of the failure has expired (provided, of course, that it does not constitute a contravention of any of the requirements of any enforcement notice or breach of condition notice then in force).

The Deputy Judge held that to answer the question whether enforcement action can be taken against a failure to comply with a condition, the decision maker should identify the failure to comply, look to see when, as a matter of fact and degree, that failure began and, finally, decide whether a period of ten years has since expired. He made the point that in this context a failure to comply with a condition is not to be confused with the continuation or abandonment of a planning use. Most significantly, he observed that if non-compliance ceases by discontinuance of the offending activity or otherwise, that breach is at an end. The condition will, however, in an appropriate case continue in force. If there is subsequently renewed non-compliance, this would be a fresh breach, and the period for enforcement against the breach under section 171B(3) will begin to run again. It is not permissible to add the period of one breach to that of a subsequent breach, if as a matter of fact and degree they are separate breaches.

In applying that test under section 191(3) the decision maker is concerned with the particular non-compliance, the subject of the application for a certificate. This is consistent with a requirement that the non-compliance should exist at the time of the application. The Deputy Judge was careful to make it clear that he was confining himself to those provisions of section 191 which deal specifically with failure to comply with a condition, and he concluded that an application for an LDC can only be made if non-compliance exists at the time of the application. The applicant will then be entitled to a certificate if, at that time, the failure the subject of the application satisfies the definition of lawfulness, i.e. that a period of 10 years has expired since that breach occurred [or one might say ‘began’, in the case of the breach of a condition requiring continuous compliance, such as an occupancy condition].

The Deputy Judge then went on to make a number of observations (which were in their nature obiter) on the relationship of this issue with the other provisions of section 191 in respect of uses and operations. These observations are nevertheless of relevance in view of their having been quoted in later judgments relating to those issues, which I will examine in the next part of this article.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Further planning changes put off until after the General Election

In the interval between Christmas and the New Year, De-CLoG sneaked out its “Ninth Statement of New Regulation: January to June 2015”, which (if what it says on the tin is to be believed) lists all the subordinate legislation that De-CLoG ministers intend to bring into force between 1 January and 30 June 2015. The word “all” is not actually used in the document, but it is reasonable to assume that if the government had a firm intention to introduce any other measures before the General Election they would have been included in this document.

The statement is therefore unintentionally revealing in having omitted a number of significant planning changes which were loudly trumpeted by ministers last year, and which would certainly have been included in the list of forthcoming measures if the government still intended to bring them forward before the General Election.

Among the previously proposed changes about which the document is deafeningly silent are further amendments to the GPDO to enable more changes of use in addition to those previously introduced within the past two years. These were expected to include the change of use of light industrial units (B1(c)), warehouses and storage units (B8) and some sui generis uses (launderettes, amusement arcades/centres, casinos and nightclubs) to residential use (C3), and changes of some sui generis uses to restaurants (C3) and leisure uses (D2).

There is no mention, either, of the government’s intention to make permanent those permitted development rights which currently expire in May 2016. We had been promised that the existing time limit for completing office to residential conversions would be extended from 30 May 2016 to 30 May 2019. It doesn’t look as this is going to happen this side of the General Election. The same applies to the right to build larger domestic extensions (under Part 1), currently expiring in May 2016.

Another measure that it seems will not be coming forward is the right to make alterations to shops, so as to allow retailers to alter their premises, plus additional PD rights covering (among other things) further extensions to houses and business premises, over and above existing permitted extensions.

Turning to the Use Classes Order, there is no mention of the proposed merger of Use Classes A1 and A2 in a single new ‘town centre’ use class. This was expected to be accompanied by a further amendment of the GPDO to allow change of use to the widened retail (A1) class from betting shops and pay day loan shops (A2), restaurants and cafés (A3), drinking establishments (A4), and hot food takeaways (A5). Similarly there is no mention of the intended restriction of the scope of the current A2 use class, so that betting offices and pay-day loan shops (both currently falling within this Use Class) would become sui generis uses.

Another measure of which no mention is made is the suggested increase in floorspace in a building in retail use (including the introduction of mezzanine floors), currently limited to 200 sq m, that can be made without its coming within the definition of development under section 55 (and therefore requiring planning permission). [I thought the original provision in the 2004 Act had been brought into force with effect from 10 May 2006, but I haven’t been able to put my finger on the SI which confirmed this limit, and have begun to wonder whether this provision in the 2004 Act is actually in force. Perhaps someone can enlighten me.]

There is one measure (relating to a proposed reduction in qualifying time for the Right to Buy scheme) which has been pencilled in for April 2015, but is flagged up as being “dependent on the Deregulation Bill”. The same would apply to the previously announced intention to relax section 25(3) of the Greater London (General Powers) Act 1973, so as to allow some types of short-term lettings in Greater London that are currently prohibited by that sub-section of the 1973 Act. But in this case, there is no mention of the proposed measure in the De-CLoG statement. Is this another measure that has bitten the dust?

Perhaps it was the realisation that these various measures could not now be brought forward before the General Election that led to George Osborne refraining from re-announcing them yet again in his Autumn Statement.

In Cloud-cuckoo-land, where Tory members of our coalition government seem to live, it is confidently expected that the government will be able to introduce these various measures after the General Election, and in the meantime they will no doubt feature as commitments in the Tory Party election manifesto. In the real world, where the rest of us live, the survival of the present government after May seems a little less than probable. An incoming government of a different political composition may not wish to continue with these proposals, and so this may be the end of the road for the present government’s planning ‘reform’ agenda.

UPDATE: I am grateful to Sally Davis of G L Hearn and to Ray Tutty of Savills, both of whom kindly emailed me with a note of the provision that I had been unable to find, which specifies the limit for internal enlargements of retail floorspace. This was Article 4 of the Town and Country Planning (General Development Procedure) (Amendment) (England) Order 2006, which inserted Article 2A in the original DMPO stating that the amount specified under section 55(2A) of the Act is 200 square metres. Any change in this floorspace limit would therefore be by means of a further amendment of the DMPO. It would still be possible for this change to be made in the time available, but its omission from the statement of forthcoming subordinate legislation suggests that the government may not see it as a priority.

NOTE: As readers are no doubt well aware, the coalition government did manage at the last minute to make the promised changes to the GPDO. For completely up-to-date and fully comprehensive coverage of this subject, we would strongly recommend readers to obtain a copy of the author’s new book - “A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO PERMITTED CHANGES OF USE” published by Bath Publishing in October 2015. You can order your copy by clicking on the link on the left-hand sidebar of this page.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Noah and an ark of reeds

I DON’T RECALL having heard anything said about plants on Noah’s Ark. Animals, yes, two of every kind, but no flowers or trees or vegetables. Noah certainly had sufficient meat on board for a circumnavigation but he would have found it hard going without barley for his beer and rice for his breakfast crispies.

I like to think of him as one of the first yachtsmen in the business, but perhaps he was more like Thor Heyerdahl than Joshua Slocum, because, contrary to what most of us were taught in Sunday school, Noah didn’t build his ark of wood. At least, not according to The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Seahe didn’t.

The OxCom says that the ark, in which Noah and his family escaped the deluge with all the animals, was probably not built of wood because there simply wasn’t enough wood in the entire Tigris-Euphrates region to build it of timber.

You will recall, of course, that the ark measured 300 cubits in length by 50 in beam and 30 in height. In terms of Egyptian royal cubits of about 21 inches each, that translates to a vessel measuring 521 feet long by 87 feet wide by 52 feet high. More of a ship than a boat, actually.

This has led researchers to assume that the ark was therefore built, according to the local traditional fashion, of papyrus reeds, roughly in the shape of a tea tray, with a little local wood used in the domestic quarters, cowsheds, pigsties, and so on. It sounds an awful lot like a larger version of Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki raft.

Of course, one has to ponder how a 500-foot-long vessel constructed of reeds would hold together in any kind of seaway, but it is not for us to wonder why. Noah had faith, which is apparently as useful as a good solid wooden keel, and is not to be questioned.

Today’s Thought

God’s revelation to Adam didn’t instruct Noah how to build the ark.

— Ezra Taft Benson

Tailpiece

A little girl had just finished her first week of school.

Im just wasting my time, she said to her mother. I cant read, I cant write, and they wont let me talk!

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Permitted Changes of Use – the book and the seminar

By the beginning of October, preparations were well in hand for the publication of my book - A Practical Guide to Permitted Changes of Use, but we were still awaiting an announcement of the government’s intentions with regard to the completion deadline for the residential conversion of offices under Class O, which had been due to expire on 30 May 2016.

This announcement eventually came on 12 October, and was supplemented by a further press statement from De-CLoG the following day, which included the news that demolition of existing office buildings and new build will in future be part of the permitted development under Class O.

The announcement could not have been worse-timed from the point of view of our production schedule for the book. We had to make a rapid assessment of the details that had been announced and decide how to deal with the prospective changes to Class O (and one or two other expected changes, such as the residential conversion of launderettes and light industrial buildings).

A crucial factor was clearly going to be the actual timing of these various changes. De-CLoG’s Press Office are still unsure about the precise timetable, but the best guess seems to be that these changes will all take effect at the end of next May. We have decided that there would be no point in delaying the publication of the book for six months, and so (having included in the text such details of the forthcoming changes as are presently known) we have now sent the book to the printers. This unexpected delay has meant that we will miss our intended October publication date, but the book should now come out about a week or ten days into November.

Bath Publishing have extended the pre-publication price offer on the book until 13 November, and so this is your last chance to order this book at the special pre-publication price of £35. You can order your copy now by clicking through on the link on the left-hand side of this page.

In the meantime, bookings for the seminar linked to the publication of the book have been going so well that we had sold out all the 106 places that were originally available by 16 October. Unfortunately, the larger lecture room at the Institution of Civil Engineers in Great George Street is not available, and so in view of the continuing demand for tickets, we have moved the seminar to the RIBA at 66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD. This is equally central and equally easy to reach by public transport, and moving to the new venue will ensure that we don’t have to disappoint anyone else who would like to attend. Bookings had reached 146 by this morning, and we now have capacity for up to 250 in total. If you have already booked, Bath Publishing will be in touch with more details about the change of venue later this week.

In view of the phenomenal response that we have had, we have also extended the deadline for ‘early bird’ online bookings at the reduced price of £120 (for readers of this blog only) to 13 November, but this will be your last chance to book for the seminar at this bargain price (including a copy of the book within this price). You can book your place now by clicking through on the link on the left-hand side of this page and entering the discount code COUPRE25 when prompted, or by calling Bath Publishing on 01225 577810. Bookings made after 13 November will only be accepted at the full price of £145.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Protecting the Bilge

Water is the enemy of wood longevity. Protecting the wood inside the boat, especially in the bilge is critical. Heres the plan, slightly ridiculous in its conservatism.

1. Two coats of Copper Napthenate (Copper Green) to prevent bacterial and fungal decay.
2. Two coats of water-based exterior latex primer.
3. A coat of water-based exterior latex paint.

First though, I wanted to make sure that water in the bilge could flow through the framing members and would not accumulate against one side of the frame. Traditionally, this is called a limber hole.

Now on to the wood preservation: First Copper Green.

Now primer.

And finally paint.

Im not sure why, but a simple coat of paint makes me so happy.

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The origin of the Boat Bowl

A few months ago my wife showed me a picture of a wooden bowl from a catalog and asked me if I could create something similar. I had a concept in my mind that I thought I would try "someday", so this was the opportunity to use it. I quickly drew and fabricated a bowl to prove the technique. It came out okay, so I made some bowls slightly bigger, realizing that bigger was actually easier when laminating and sanding the inside. Then she asked for a longer, more flared design, and I made several of those, including for a friend who liked the design. Well, as one who enjoys designing and building boats, you may guess what happened next. I took the design for the next boat I plan to build and simplified and scaled it to create a "boat bowl".

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Change of use of shops to residential use

NOTE: There have been significant changes to the law since this blog post was published, and so the material printed below does not accurately reflect the current position. For completely up-to-date and fully comprehensive coverage of this topic, we would strongly recommend readers to obtain a copy of the author’s new book on the subject - ”A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO PERMITTED CHANGES OF USE” published by Bath Publishing in October 2015. You can order your copy by clicking on the link on the left-hand sidebar of this page.

As predicted in my post on 18 July (“And now – A1 to C3?”), De-CLoG has now published a consultation paper suggesting this and other changes to the GPDO which (among other things) would allow change of use of some shops to residential use. This consultation paper is only a week late, having been promised for “the end of July”.

These changes were foreshadowed in the 2013 Budget Statement. De-CLoG is proposing to create a permitted development right for change of use (together with the associated physical works – in contrast with the recent provisions for change of use from office to residential) from a small shop (Class A1) or from professional/financial services (Class A2) to residential use (Class C3). It also proposes to allow a change of use from retail (A1) to use as a bank or a building society branch (within Class A2) (but not to other uses within this use class) and from agricultural use to residential use. I will deal with these latter proposals in a separate post.

The department’s stated intention is to find new uses for shops that no longer have a future. The consultation paper gives a perfunctory nod towards the “town centre first” policy set out in the NPPF, but does not propose to restrict the new permitted development right to a particular type of retail unit or site (e.g. secondary retail frontage). The proposed amendment will allow for necessary works for the residential conversion, including a new frontage, windows and doors.

The developer will be required to apply to the LPA for prior approval in respect of design, the potential impact of the loss of the retail unit on the economic health of the town centre, the need to maintain an adequate provision of essential local services such as post offices, and the potential impact of the change of use on the character of the local area. This will allow the local authority to have regard to their local plan policies for the area. So LPAs will still have quite a wide discretion over the determination of these change of use applications. In practice, it looks as though this alone could largely negative the liberalisation that the government claims to be seeking. This point is impliedly recognised in the consultation paper, which points out that the refusal of prior approval will be subject to appeal if local authorities are found to be using it unreasonably to prevent these changes of use.

The proposed permitted development right will be limited to A1 and A2 premises of not more than 150 square metres floor area, and will allow conversion to a single dwelling house or a maximum of four flats (but not a small HMO). Premises in conservation areas, National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Broads and World Heritage sites (“Article 1(5) land”) will be excluded.

The consultation paper recognises that local planning authorities can issue Article 4 Directions to prevent or restrict such changes of use, although it does include a reminder that compensation may become payable.

Subject to the consultation exercise (which is due to end in October), the intention is that these further amendments to the GPDO should take effect in April 2014.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Short term use of residential property in London

I have blogged on this topic several times in the past year, but I was wondering why the journos on the Evening Standard were getting excited on this subject in an article in today’s edition of the paper. The Deregulation Bill, which will enable the Secretary of State to relax the rules on short-term lettings in Greater London is still in the House of Lords, and the third day of the Report Stage is not due until Wednesday of this week, so Royal Assent is unlikely to be achieved until after both houses come back from their half term break after 23 February. By my calculation, that isn’t going to leave time for subordinate legislation to be laid before parliament so as to come into effect before the General Election (although I am open to correction on this, if any of you know better).

So what exactly prompted today’s article in the ES? I think it must have been De-CLoG’s publication today of a document entitled “ Promoting the sharing economy in London - Policy on short-term use of residential property in London”, which is yet another expression of the government’s wishful thinking, without actually telling us when we can expect the promised change to come about (if indeed it ever does, given the uncertainty over the likely result of the General Election).

The position today is, and will remain for the time being, that short-term lets (of less than 90 days) in Greater London are a material change of use (to a sui generis use) which requires planning permission. The ES seems to think that the change in the law is immediate, but it is not even imminent. That could conceivably change, but I am still not betting on its happening this side of the General Election; and what will happen after that is beyond the wit of man to foretell.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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Weekly Fishing Reports April 26th

Photo credit: Andrew Perrault

Gorge Fly Shop Weekly Fishing Reports

Links of interest:

Redington Wader Rebate

Trout Spey Chronicles

"Fly Fish the World with Us"

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Columbia Gorge Fishing Reports June 8th

June 6, 2015

Fish Boy Gabe has Mastered Carp Angling

Most of the streams in both Oregonand Washingtonare open now for general season trout fishing, so exploring the high mountain streams is an option.  The opportunities for fishing are vast in the gorge right now.  From Shad to Carp to Bass, the Columbiais fishing great.  Local tributaries have kicked out a few early steelhead, and there is still a chance for catching a Chinook Salmon or two, but make sure to check the regulations before you head out the door.

WASHINGTON:

http://wdfw.wa.gov/publications/01590/wdfw01590.pdf

OREGON: http://www.dfw.state.or.us/fish/docs/2015/2015%20Oregon%20Sport%20Fishing%20Regs_r12-11-14.pdf

John and I did an opening day float on the Klickitat on Monday.  I managed to get one fish to eat early in the day and I lost him at my feet after a quick battle.  It was the first opening day fish I have hooked in the Klick in three or four years now. 

There are thousands of hungry steelhead smolt in the river right now and keeping them off the line is difficult.  There are certain flies and colors that they like and dislike more than others, but its pretty tough to deal with them if you are in the thick of a smolt school.  There was a run where I just had to sit down and wait for John to stop because the smolt were hitting my fly on every cast from the second it hit the water to the second I recast it. 

American Shad are running thick on the Columbia River right now.  The majority of the action happens below Bonneville Dam, near Beacon Rock, near Cascade Locks and upstream near Rufus.  If you can find them you can catch them.  They are hard fighting fish that readily take flies and are tons of fun on a 5 or 6wt fly rod.

Fishboy Gabe has been catching carp on the fly with some consistency lately.  They are in shallow on the Columbiaand the impoundments near the highway 84 and feeding late into the evening.  Carp often stop tailing in the shallows in the mid afternoon, making evening fishing hard, but they have been feeding heavily lately all day from sunrise to sunset.

Rainbow Trout on the Deschutes Riverare still a great option for anglers.  The fishing has not been red hot, but there have been some great days and some bad days out there.  Small dark caddis have been hatching later in the day, while nymphing with a #20 flashback pheasant tail has been the most consistent during the day.  If you get out super early, a spent caddis will work before the sun comes up.  Swinging a soft hackle on a micro spey has been good and streamer fishing has been good in the mornings. 

Remember that there is NO FISHING FROM A BOAT ON THE DESCHUTES and also, fishing on the Warm Springs Reservation is highly regulated, so check the regulations before you start fishing on the wrong side… Some sections require a permit and others are prohibited all together. 

Spring Chinook have really shut down in a lot of places.  The Klickitat River has been a bright spot in the area for Chinook.  Anglers have been able to catch a fish or two a day with plugs or drifting bait through the deep holes.  The river below Bonneville Dam has been opened the past few days and rumors of the big “June Hogs” have been circulating though the area. 

The Cowlitz Riverhas been kicking out some summer steelhead already, and is probably the most consistent producer of fish in the Northwest for steelhead through the summer. 

The Klickitat River opened for summer steelhead and Chinook salmon on Monday, June 1.  The action has been good for June.  Typically, the water is high and dirty this time of year and it makes steelhead fishing tough.  With low water conditions, it feels more like fall out there.  There are steelhead in the river, but we are a few months away from consistent fishing. 

Smallmouth Bass have been hitting topwater late in the day on the Columbia River and John Day River. Look for structure near deeper water, but the fish may be in shallow late and early in the day.  There are big fish around, it just takes some searching.

Rainbow, Cutthroat, Brown and Brook Trout have been eating flying ants in the high elevation lakes.  They tend to gorge on them later in the day when the bugs start flying heavily.  Damselfly nymphs and callibaetis are also working well, along with smaller chironomids.  Timothy, Clear, Trillium, Laurence and Lost Lakes are all great OregonLakes, while Merrill and Goose Lakes are great choices for Washington anglers.

As always, we are happy to talk fishing any time.  Give us a call if you have any specific questions on local rivers, gear, and tactics, or if you just want some encouragement to get out of the office.  

"Fly Fish the World with Us"

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Government’s U turn “to save the Green Belt”

You can tell there’s an election coming. Even though ministers and their advisers are well aware that there is an urgent need to release land, including Green Belt land, to meet the requirements for housing land, De-CLoG has issued a statement in which they once again trot out the old mantra that, once established, Green Belt boundaries should only be altered in exceptional cases.

Eric Pickles is quoted as saying: “Protecting our precious green belt must be paramount. Local people don’t want to lose their countryside to urban sprawl, or see the vital green lungs around their towns and cities lost to unnecessary development.” [Translation: “We know the NIMBYs are wrong really, but they might go and vote for UKIP, so at all costs we are going to say and do whatever it takes to get the Tory defectors back into fold, even though it makes a complete nonsense of our pledge to get more houses built. Getting ourselves re-elected has to come first.”]

Uncle Eric and his friends have suddenly re-discovered ‘Localism’ and are claiming that “Local Plans are now at the heart of the reformed, democratic planning system, so councils can decide where development should and shouldn’t go in consultation with local people.”.

Planning officers can naturally be expected to take a more objective view of these matters, because they have to work out a way of planning for the housing needs of their localities, but this had led them (unsurprisingly) to recommend to their authorities that some Green Belt land will have to be released in order to meet objectively assessed targets (even though these are no longer set by central government.) But to counter this, the government’s on-line guidance has been amended to read that assessing need is just the first stage in the preparation of a council’s local plan, and that in assessing the suitability of land to meet the identified need for housing over the plan period, they “should take account of any constraints such as Green Belt which indicate that development should be restricted and which may restrain the ability of an authority to meet its need”.

This makes it quite clear that having objectively assessed housing need in their area, LPAs should feel free to ignore it, if is politically inexpedient to release green field sites (and particularly some parts of the Green Belt) in order to allocate sufficient land to meet their housing need. If this advice is to be taken at face value, it would appear that the government is abandoning the requirement that LPAs must demonstrate that they have a five-year housing land supply, plus a 5% margin (six years’ supply in cases where council’s have failed to produce sufficient housing land in the past, in the form of committed schemes) if they can excuse themselves by pointing to constraints such as the Green Belt (or any other plausible excuses). It also seems to let them off the hook of having to co-operate with neighbouring authorities in the provision of housing land, even though the 2011 Act requires them to do so.

This is bad news for house-builders, and it is bad news for first-time buyers. It also makes a nonsense of recent legislative and policy changes which were directed at securing the provision of adequate housing land. But then, as I said, we are now in the run-up to the General Election, and I did predict a major U-turn sooner or later in this pre-election period. This latest ministerial statement seems to herald that U-turn, and there will no doubt be more to come, as an increasingly panic-stricken Tory Party thrashes about trying to find something, anything, that might secure a few more votes and get them across the winning line next May.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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GPSs unfortunate downside

 AS A NAVIGATOR in the dark days before GPS, I used to do a lot of guessing. Most of it was informed guessing, however. I had my reasons.

For example, I discovered that a right-handed helmsman sailed a course farther off the wind while on the beat on the port tack than did a left-handed helmsman. The opposite applied when the boat was on the other tack. The left-handed helm was using his right hand on the tiller, his weaker arm, and so the boat rounded up more in the gusts and carved a course closer to the wind. The right-handed helm was able to use his greater strength to apply more weather helm to stay on course.   

The reason I knew this was because, in between sextant sights, it was the navigator’s task to keep a dead reckoning plot. But he couldn’t stay awake in the cockpit day and night to check that the helmsman was following exactly the course he had been given, so he asked the cockpit crew at the end of every four-hour watch to estimate what their average speed had been and what average course they had sailed. This information was then plotted on the chart to give a dead-reckoning position.

In the ancient days of commercial sail they used a traverse board for the same purpose. It was a very clever little device that allowed the navigator to see at a glance the speed and course the ship had covered during the last watch. It was nothing more than a wooden board with a compass rose on its face and 32 radial rows of holes. Every half-hour, when the sand-glass was turned, the helmsman placed a peg in the hole of the compass point that matched the average direction the ship had been steered during the last 30 minutes.

At the same time, the crew ascertained the ship’s speed on a chip log, and a peg was placed in the appropriate hole on a special speed grid. So the navigator could now come on deck and see what had been happening in the way of speed and direction while he was down below, allowing for all the zigs and zags and wavy wake lines.

He would make a note of these averages and start guessing about leeway and current and a few other things that his instinct supplied corrections for, and then he could plot a dead-reckoning position on a chart. Then all the pegs were pulled out of the board for the next watch to play with.

Nowadays, with all those clever satellites twinkling away in the sky, there’s no need for a traverse board or dead reckoning. GPS does all the grunt work and makes navigation so easy that nobody has any respect for the job any more. Ordinary foredeck hands used to step back in awe when the navigator came strolling along jauntily with his sextant box under his arm and a roll of charts in his hand. Skippers used to address navigators with civility, offer them drinks, and treat them almost as if they were human. No longer, I’m afraid. All that has gone. GPS is very clever, but it has a lot to answer for.

Today’s Thought

Navigation is what tells you where you are, and, what’s just as important, where you aren’t.

 — John Vigor

Tailpiece

“Why do all those cows in Switzerland wear bells around their necks?”

“Dunno. Maybe it’s because their horns don’t work.”

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Judicial review – a different solution

One of the drawbacks of judicial review, as anyone who has ever been involved with the process will be very well aware, is that when a decision is quashed by the court the decision under challenge is not reversed; it is simply set aside, leaving the decision-maker to retake the decision. The decision-maker in redetermining the matter can very easily reach the same decision again, provided that they do so in a way that avoids the legal error that led to the original decision being quashed. There are several examples of which I am aware where there have been successive quashing orders of a retaken decision; but the public body or authority involved will nearly always get their own way in the end. Thus a successful action seeking to judicially review an unlawful action or decision all too often proves to be a pyrrhic victory.

The court cannot substitute its own judgment for that of the LPA or other body whose decision is under challenge, because the court simply does not have before it all the relevant facts that would need to be taken into account and weighed up in retaking the decision, nor does it have the necessary expertise to exercise a technical (as distinct from legal) judgment. But in planning cases, at least, it would be entirely possible to introduce amending legislation (whether primary legislation or, possibly, a simple rule change) to provide that when planning permissions and perhaps certain other planning-related decisions by LPAs are quashed, jurisdiction would then pass to the Secretary of State (in practice, the Planning Inspectorate on his behalf) to redetermine the application as if it had been made to him in the first instance. This might or might not involve a public inquiry, depending on the circumstances of the case. A mandatory order requiring the issue of an enforcement notice (admittedly very rare in practice) might also be transferred to the Secretary of State for implementation.

I am not aware of this suggestion ever having been put forward before, although I would not be at all surprised to learn that something of this sort may have been canvassed at some time in the past. However, I do not expect that it is an idea that government (of any political persuasion) is likely to take up, unless there is a groundswell of opinion resulting from dissatisfaction at the outcome of the current judicial review process in planning cases.

© MARTIN H GOODALL

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